Meanwhile, in Indy ...

 So here's what happened at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway over the weekend, aka the Brickyard, aka That Big Ol' Scary Place: 

* Scott McLaughlin won the pole with the fastest pole-position run in history, a 234.220 jaunt on a 90-degree day that cooked the track surface to 130 degrees and turned it into 2 1/2 miles of  non-stick Teflon.

(And if you're saying here, "Wait, what about Arie Luyendyk's 236-plus trip back in 1996?", that wasn't for the pole. Luyendyk missed the first day of qualifying that year, and so his record speed only got him a starting spot in the middle of Row 7.) 

* Alexander Rossi qualified inside Row 2, but not before harming some wildlife. On Saturday, he ran over a snake that had somehow slithered onto the track. Relatives of the snake immediately filed a protest, claiming the snake had a coveted Blue Lot parking pass and was therefore fully within his legal rights to be there.

(OK, so I made up that last part. But there was a snake on the track, perhaps an IMS first. Also, the Blue Lot reference is an inside joke for my fellow veteran Indy 500 scribes, who used to battle for spots there on race day.)

* McLaughlin, Will Power and reigning 500 champion Josef Newgarden gave Team Penske its first sweep of the front row since 1988. Which of course immediately got the Tinfoil Hat Brigade conspiratizing about Roger's crowd cheating again, considering it was an illegal push-to-pass boost issue that stripped Newgarden of his season-opening win at St. Pete.

"How come THEY didn't have the same issues with those Chevy engines everyone else seemed to. Hmmm?" the Tinfoils sneered.

Rossi, meanwhile, observed that Team Penske had been doing an awful lot of jaw-flappin' lately, and said it would give him extra motivation for race day.

The Blob's official position: Whatever works, dude.

* Marcus Ericsson, your 2022 winner and last year's runnerup, squeaked into the field in Last-Chance qualifying, but not before flunking basic elementary school math. On his initial run, he unaccountably lost track of the number of laps he'd completed, lifting as he got the white flag and ruining the attempt.

That got him an extra 45 minutes or so to marinate in his car while the engine cooled,  steeling himself for four more edge-of-the-envelope laps on that Teflon griddle. Fun times.

* Speaking of fun times, Graham Rahal had to literally sweat out the last fleeing seconds of the Last Chance session, same as last year. This time it worked out; 19-year-old rookie Nolan Siegel, making a last desperate attempt to knock out Rahal after Ericsson knocked him out, got over his skis a skoche on his second lap, hit the wall off turn two and ended his attempt.

That left Rahal shaken but in the field in the 33rd and last starting spot. And suggesting, or at least seeming to, that teammate Takuma Sato got the good Honda engine and he got one from out back in the spare parts lot or some such thing.

Which might or might not have led to an interesting conversation with Rahal's team owner -- his dad, 1986 Indy 500 winner Bobby Rahal.

And last but not least ...

* NASCAR star Kyle Larson, who's taken to IMS and those IndyCar rocket ships like (insert metaphor here), stuck his Arrow McLaren ride in the middle of Row 2, then went winging off to the NASCAR All-Star race in North Wilkesboro, N.C.

He finished fourth. Joey Logano won. In other news, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. scored a TKO over Kyle Busch in the garage area after the race.

Here's the video. Enjoy.